


Mythic

by tanarill



Category: Danny Phantom, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Amulets, Challenges, Gen, Insanity, Magic, Magical Realism, Rituals, Runes, Study of Ancient Runes, Trickster Gods, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-18
Updated: 2007-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-13 00:43:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13559052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanarill/pseuds/tanarill
Summary: There is a good reason gods mostly keep out of the affairs or mortals. Or even, as Vlad Masters is about to learn, semi-mortals.





	Mythic

Carefully carved stone? Check.

Circle, marked out in ash and very old bluestone? Check.

Pukha? It banged against its cage. Definite check.

Opening the book to the correct page, Plasmius smiled. He was ready to assume the power of a god.

***

He could feel it start to go wrong almost the second he started, not the least because he couldn’t stop. He hadn’t prepared for this, and had no idea what to do except-

- _what do you want in exchange for this power, Halfling-dead?_ -

-find Daniel. The world started to invert, and he heard wild, cackling laughter-

- _You would bind me? But your price must be paid. Very well. Where is this Daniel? Good, now where is Amity Park? Better._ -

-and it was suddenly red and there was someone applying alcohol to his eyes.

He screamed.

***

He arrived in Amity Park late, only because the Halfling-dead had given him poor instructions, and immediately started ripping the place apart. He laughed delightedly when he discovered ectoblasts, and continued taking the place to pieces. The mental image had been far from clear, but certainly this ‘Daniel’ person would appear for -

“What is it now, Vlad?”

\- such random destruction. He flew off towards the forest (such a lovely body this was, although it could be improved with red hair) and the other Halfling-dead followed.

Grasping his focus in one hand, he urged the body to go fasterfaster, shrieking like teakettle.

Until the ectoblast hit him in the back. Then he turned to fight. Turned being the operative word; his focus flared.

- _No, he is_ mine _!_ -

And it was just enough to distract him to fly into a tree.

The world went black.

*** 

Danny picked up the reddish stone, pulsing slightly, and shivered. He was lucky it was a weekend; he would have been missed from school by now. 

He wished Vlad would stop attacking, but this stone-whatever it was-seemed to be the goal . . . 

But. There was something wrong. Vlad wouldn’t be doing this–he might be one to fight unfair, but he would never involve bystanders if there was no gain for him. He’d try and hurt Danny and inadvertently level city blocks, but there was no way that he’d level city blocks and then simply ignore or run from him. Vlad Masters had too much pride. 

But Vlad Masters, or even Vlad Plasmius, might be overshadowed. 

Leaving the incapacitated Vlad where he was, he flew off to find Sam and Tucker. 

*** 

“. . . and so I think there’s something wrong with him,” he said turning the amulet over in his hands. 

“Hello? Dude? This is the same guy who’s been after your Mom for twenty years. Of _course_ there’s something wrong with him.” 

Danny rolled his eyes. “More wrong than usual, I mean. Vlad’s just not acting like Vlad.” 

“Hey, guys?” 

“So what do you want me to do?” 

“Can’t you, like, hack into his computer or something? Find out what he’s up to?” 

“Guys?” 

“Um, no. Or yes, but the computer he’s got hooked to the internet has nothing on it. If he has notes, he’s got them stored on an isolated system in Wisconsin. Or they’re hardcopy, and who knows where they’d be then.” 

“GUYS!” Both of them turned to look at Sam, sitting in front of Danny’s computer with a half-dozen web pages up and a smug expression on her face. “I think I found it.” 

It wasn’t exactly the amulet Danny was holding. It was better-crafted, for one, as if the person who had made it actually knew what they were doing. For another, the sharp runic lines marched in neat ranks across the stone, whereas Vlad’s held only a few, and those crudely carved. And of course, there was the fact that the one on the internet didn’t have a heartbeat. But aside from that, they were similar. 

Tucker was reading the page. “A runestone. Meant to invoke the protection of Odin, the All-father, upon the wearer. Gives him strength in battle. So,” he turned to look at the one Danny was looking at, aghast, “what does that one do?” 

It took another half-hour of cheerful argument to find out even the beginning. They had no luck trying to search by the amulet’s appearance, because there were literally _thousands_ of new-agey hippie places selling or displaying similar ones. Eventually, Tucker thought to search for the runes, and then see what theirs had. 

Fire. 

Earth. 

Serpent. 

It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a start. 

*** 

Danny’s dreams that night were not pleasant. He dreamed of being locked away in the cold and dark, nowhere near the fiery warmth of the sun. He was held in place by chains that weren’t chains, were _wrong_ , and he yearned for fire. As he writhed there, held in the dark and the cold, something that burned (but not like fire) fell upon him, and he screamed and the earth shook. 

*** 

At school, he kept drifting off to sleep, and had he not had Sam and Tucker to keep edging him awake, he wouldn’t have made it through the day. The one saving grace was that no ghosts attacked, although he found it more ominous than reassuring; the only things ghosts ran from was a more powerful ghost. At lunch, Tucker asked what was up. 

“Nightmares,” he replied, and told them. 

He could swear he saw the light bulb pop into existence over Tucker’s head. “Loki!” 

“Who?” 

But Sam knew this. “Loki, Norse God of – well, a lot of things. But one of the biggest ones was–” 

“Mischief,” broke in Tucker. “Chaos.” 

Danny looked at the expression on his face and said, “He’s not a nice god, is he?” 

Wordlessly, Tucker shook his head. 

*** 

Vlad didn’t reappear and attack. This was the good thing that happened. 

The bad things that happened were: 

Danny had had nine hours of sleep in the last forty-eight; 

There was, apparently, a totally psychotic god on the loose, and he didn’t know its goal; 

Worse, he had no idea how to stop it; and 

He still had homework to do. 

But, since Vlad hadn’t appeared, and Amity Park’s usual ghosts seemed to have gone to ground, and there was nothing they could do without further research, he did his homework first, and then collapsed into bed. 

That night, he dreamed of fire and of ice. 

*** 

Eighteen hours later, he was having one of the most, well, _normal_ days he’d had since becoming a ghost. He’d been on time to school, Dash hadn’t shoved him in his locker, and all his homework was done and ready to hand in. 

He tried not to think about the pulsing stone buried in his backpack, and waited for the other shoe to drop. 

*** 

It finally did a week later, but not because Vlad appeared. It was because Tucker, who had been “Seeing what he could find out,” had finally done so. And the news wasn’t pretty. 

“All right. There’s good news and then there’s bad news. Which do you want first?” 

“Bad.” 

“Loki has, as near as I can tell, possessed Vlad.” 

“. . . good?” 

“Most of his power is sitting in your backpack. In the amulet. And so is Vlad” 

“So all I have to do is break the amulet – ” Danny began reaching for it. 

“ _NO!_ ” said Tucker. “I mean don’t know what will happen. Best case, it will send him back to . . . wherever he came from, and set Vlad free. Worst case, it will kill Vlad and give him back his power. But right now, that’s the only thing keeping him in Vlad’s body and weak. I don’t know what happens if you break the amulet.” 

“Then either way, Vlad’s out of the picture. I just keep the amulet and Loki’s too weak to fight me?” 

“The closer he gets to it, the stronger he’ll be. And you can bet he’ll be trying to get it too. I’m not too sure about what it’s doing, aside from holding his power, but letting him get it is not a good idea.” 

“Great,” groaned Danny. “I have a god after me – ” 

“ – an _insane_ god – ” broke in Tucker cheerfully. 

“ – an insane god after me, thank you Tucker, he’s going to be more powerful the closer to me he gets, he’s currently in the body of the only other halfa on the planet, said halfa is probably in a rock I’m holding, and we’re supposed to be playing keep-away with the rock. Did I miss anything?” 

“No . . . ” 

“So how do I beat it?” 

“ _You_ don’t,” said Sam, brightening up. “You fight fire . . . with fire.” 

*** 

“I feel stupid,” said Danny. 

He had right to. He was standing in the woods – 

“Why the woods?” 

“The Norse didn’t make temples, they worshipped in the woods.” 

– in a circle made of ash twigs – 

“The nature book says that’s an ash tree, go get some twigs.” 

“I’m not getting ash twigs.” 

“The myth says we need ash twigs. You can fly. Go get some ash twigs.” 

– with a really crappy amulet he’d made using a highly modified Fenton Laser – 

“Why am I making it?” 

“You’re the one who wants to summon the god, right?” 

– naked. 

“Sam, you had better not be watching!” 

“I’m not watching,” said Sam from the bushes. Watching 

“Okay, dude,” said Tucker, repressing a snicker. “You read off the sheet, and hope this works. Ready?” 

“No,” said Danny, and started reading off the sheet anyway, stumbling a little over the guttural words. 

Almost immediately, he sensed the attention focusing on him. It felt like explaining to the entire town that yes, he was Danny Phantom. It wasn’t angry, or at least not at him. It was quite surprised, a little curious, and very much amused. By the times he was halfway through, he wouldn’t have been able to tell if the words were reading him or he was reading the words, but he wasn’t stumbling over them. There was a building sensation of pressure focused on the crudely made amulet in his hands. And then – 

Describing it would wake no sense. Reality twisted for a moment, and Danny both was and was not himself, the stone, and moving outward, the clearing, the woods, the entire world – 

The moment ended. And he was again Danny Fenton, aka Phantom, standing naked in the woods, although where the ash twigs had been there were now saplings and he was quite emphatically not alone in his head. 

He knew this because the _other_ presence was cursing. 

*** 

It took a while, as it, _he_ , explained two hours later, to figure out Danny’s language. 

“I didn’t want to be the one sent. Thor wanted to come, but he was disqualified on the count that he’s too friendly with Loki and might let him get away. Odin really should have come, but Odin’s got a hangover again, and Tyr refused because he’s Tyr. All the Valkyries were willing, but you haven’t got the qualifications–” 

“What?” 

“You’re no woman. So they all decided that I should be the one to come instead, and when you opened the way, they pitched me through. And here I am.” 

“You’re . . . ?” 

“Freyr, lad. Lord of Plenty and Farming. I mean, at least Tyr is a war god. Me? I have a boat. And they say, ‘Go catch Loki.’” He snorted. It was an odd sensation, as he was using Danny’s body. 

“Well, we have this amulet,” said Tucker. “It’s Loki’s power, right?” 

Danny felt the god’s attention focus on it. “You got his focus? By the Tree! This changes the game entirely. Loki may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid–he’ll be coming after this, you can bet on it.” He focused Danny’s eyes on the stone, and Danny gasped as what the god saw was layered over what he saw. “Who made this, anyway? It’s the most twisted piece of work I’ve ever seen. Like it was made to trap _Loki_ and draw out his power instead of. Oh. It was. No wonder.” 

It was shining fishnet to Danny’s vision, but he could see that there was some pattern, some reason behind the seemingly random arrangement of lines and knots. It looked . . . hungry. He shivered. 

“Whoever made this knew very little of what he was doing, and attempted to twist it badly even so,” continued Freyr with Danny’s mouth. “It wasn’t meant to summon Loki, but it did. It was meant to trap the power of whatever was summoned. And,” he pushed, Danny could almost see how, and the glowing net revolved and spun into a new position, “because it is so poorly made, Loki was able to trap its maker in the backlash of his summoning. See here.” 

Danny was the only one of the three who could see it, but the others saw the look on his face. 

“Danny?” asked Sam. 

“It’s Vlad,” he managed, before turning and running for the bathroom. 

*** 

Later: 

“Did Loki do that to Vlad?” 

“You could argue that Vlad did that to himself,” said Freyr, gravely. “But, if he had caught anything other than Loki in this net, Vlad wouldn’t be in there. There are the remains of a cage here, but Loki pretty much rebuilt it to turn in into Vlad’s prison. Why?” 

“I don’t like Vlad. But I think I like Loki less. And we have _got_ to get Vlad out of there.” 

Freyr nodded gravely. “To defeat him,” he said, “we are going to have to trick the trickster.” 

*** 

Two weeks later – two weeks during which Danny did not have to fight ghosts but did have to deal with the constant comments and questions and earning weird looks for his pains – Loki finally attacked. 

Danny had worried about it taking so long. Freyr had laughed and explained that it was going to take Loki some time to get in the range where he could draw from the amulet, and afterwards he would be busy setting a number of successive traps. 

“And I’m supposed to get out of these traps how?” 

“If I am right, he will try and build curse nets to catch you. You are . . . something new. You have a foot in Helheim, and a foot in Midgard. He will try and catch both aspects. This would require a curse-net for the spirit and traps for the flesh, together as one. They _may_ hold you, on your own. But even if they can, in no wise can they hold me. Although we will try to keep me hidden until the last possible moment.” 

So Freyr was hiding, silent in Danny’s mind (and he hadn’t realized how _loud_ the god was until he suddenly wasn’t) when Loki attacked. It was quite loud. Almost deafening, and this turned out to be because Loki was riding a wolf easily the size of a house. 

“That’s the second biggest wolf I’ve ever seen,” remarked Tucker. 

“Really? What was the fir- ” And this was because one of the wolf’s SUV-sized paws had just come down on him. 

“What fun!” screamed Loki when Danny Phantom appeared and began to fight. 

*** 

It was a hard fight. It wouldn’t have been a hard fight except that Loki’s wolf had the attention of a mayfly and seemed to think that telephone poles were big bones, and Loki saw no reason to disabuse it of this notion unless Danny got too far away. Danny couldn’t get too far away because he was doing damage control, rescuing people by phasing them through tons of concrete, and distracting the wolf from the bright, screaming ambulances. At least until the ambulances realized that “bright, screaming” was not helping. 

After half an hour of it, he was quite literally drop-dead tired and they’d made it almost six miles, which was when Danny hit it with an ectoblast - they didn’t seem to hurt, but they at least got its attention - and flew away very quickly, accelerating. Loki, although he was riding on the crown of the great beast’s head and was not using any visible form of control, nevertheless had it following within ten seconds. Danny let go and _flew_. 

Forty miles or ten minutes later, they were in unpopulated wilderness and it was safe to turn and face the god. 

*** 

“Look, I don’t want to fight you, but you’re hurting people!” 

The wolf reclined, flanks heaving. Loki sat on the air, upside down. Apparently, gravity wasn’t noticing because Vlad’s unbound hair dangled towards his feet. “I know.” 

That made him pause. “You do?” 

A shrug. “Sure. Why else go to the trouble of drawing me off?” He patted the wolf affectionately. “And we don’t have to fight, really. You just give me my focus and you will never hear from me again.” 

“I seriously doubt that. Don’t you get free if you get your focus?” 

“Someone has done their research.” The mad god bounded, if such an action could be applied to a movement that took place wholly in midair, over to him and draped himself over Danny. “Unlike this poor fool. But he has such _interesting_ powers, all of which I shall have fun exploring. Once I have my amulet back, of course.” 

“No.” 

Blink. Blink. “I could have sworn I just heard you refuse.” 

“I did. I’m not going to _give_ you the amulet. I don’t even have it right now.” 

“Smart boy.” 

“I will make you a challenge. If you win, you get the amulet. If _I_ win, you leave, turn Vlad back to normal, and forget this ever happened.” 

It was almost possible to see him wonder if Danny was always so crazy, and then decide that there was no reason not to take him up on a wager he couldn’t lose. “Accepted. And just to make this interesting, I’ll raise you. When I win, you will show me how to use these powers. And if, by some entirely impossible trick of the imagination, _you_ win, I shall grant you a favor also.” 

Which was both better and worse than Danny had hoped for. But he couldn’t hold the image of the slightly unbalanced challenger of a god without accepting, so he did. 

Besides, it couldn’t hurt, could it? 

*** 

“That’s the challenge?” Loki blinked again. “Figure out where you put the amulet.” 

“Yes.” 

“No tricks?” 

“None.” 

“And I can ask you any questions I want?” 

“Any that can be answered yes or no.” 

“But I’m _not_ allowed to hurt people with my powers.” 

“Or with Vlad's powers.” 

“And I have until sunset.” 

“Yes.” 

“Easy as making mead.” 

*** 

An hour from sunset, and the only reason Loki hadn’t taken Amity Park to pieces was that he was challenge-bound not to. 

“And it is in this town?” he asked, glancing around as the direction the amulet came from shifted _again_. 

“No,” said Danny. 

“You said it was.” 

Silence. 

“ _Was_ it in this town?” 

“Yes.” 

“But it isn’t anymore?” 

“No.” 

“Is it moving?” 

“Yes.” 

Which is about the point that Loki began to sweat. 

*** 

A half-hour to sunset: 

“We’re right on top of it.” 

It wasn’t a yes-or-no-question, so Danny didn’t say anything. 

“Well, where _else_ could it be?” 

Still not a yes-or-no question. A nearby bush spontaneously combusted. 

*** 

Fifteen minutes to sunset: 

Valerie had to notice eventually. 

“An ally of yours?” asked Loki sarcastically. 

They were running, very fast, from the red-clad huntress. 

“Can you get rid of her without hurting her?” 

“Why should I?” 

“You have fifteen minutes and this is wasting time.” They swerve around green ectoplasmic blast. 

“ . . . good point.” 

Loki made a throwing motion at her and there was a dull _fizz_ and then her suit was several thousand dollars of well-trimmed junk. 

“Ghost boy!” she yelled behind them. 

*** 

Five minutes to sunset: 

Sweat dripped down Danny’s face as he looked at the woman, held immobile in the grasp of a man-shape that was just recognizably Vlad under the balefire that licked his skin. 

“Now,” hissed Loki, “you will tell me where you hid it.” 

Danny was immobile. “No,” said his mouth. “You cannot harm her.” 

“Do you really believe that?” 

Danny didn’t. 

Freyr did.

“Yes,” he said.

The woman was released, although the flames did not subside.

***

Sunset:

Danny struggled against bonds of magic that kept him imprisoned

“I mean, did I expect you to win? Or _course_ not. But did you expect me to keep a promise?”

“Of _course_ not,” said Freyr, snapping the magic ties like cobwebs. “But you, Loki, made a promise before two witnesses - ”

“Two?”

“The wolf and myself. You cannot break it. Return to your place, and you owe this boy a favor now.”

“ . . . I need the amulet.”

“You do not. I know how foci work. You do _not_ need the amulet to return to your place.”

“But to restore the owner of this body I do.”

“ . . . granted. But you must give your word, as a giant and as an Aesr, however corrupted, that you will not under any circumstances renege or attempt to renege on this bargain.” Above his head, a raven cawed. It was the size of a Boeing jet, although at this distance it looked quite normal, and not one in a hundred would have noticed how loud the caw was from a bird that high up. “Hugin and Munin are watching, an all or Asgard.”

“Fine. You have won. But I should like to know how.”

Loki was quite surprised when shown the Ghost Portal. “It was . . . both in and without this world the entire time. And floating freely in there, without any control . . . what a brilliant way to distract me. My congratulations.”

Danny was tense at giving Loki the amulet, but Freyr said that he would not dare break a promise made before Hugin and Munin, and indeed he did not. He did do something complicated, right before Vlad slumped forward.

***

“I knew you would find a way to defeat him.”

“Did you?” asked Danny.

Vlad gave him a look. “Take your compliments where you can get them, dear boy.” And walked away.

***

“And now, I will return to Asgard. This world of yours is interesting, but I would not want to live here. However, for your deeds, you do have the blessing of the Aesr upon you now. Call upon us if you ever need us.”

“I will.”

Then Freyr was gone, his amulet crumbled to dust.

***

“So, all’s well that ends well,” said Skulker. “True?”

“Well,” said Vlad. “I lost the power of a god, but my protégé seems to have impressed one and gained into the good graces of the others, so it was not for nothing. Still, I shall have to do better next time.”

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot that I had written this until browsing my Dreamwidth archive for the next thing to post. It was from a prompt by the fabulous archaeopterygidae, who later agreed to be my moirail. I think it's held up pretty well.
> 
> I kept trying to post this and AO3 kept messing up with the italics, like, every single paragraph. How irritating. It took me a bit to figure out how to fix it through clever use of find-and-replace. Let me know if there are still broken italics, though. Or if you find typos. I did get it up this weekend though, \o/


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